Economy

Civil service retirees face fresh headcount in payroll clean-up

The Treasury will start biometric registration of retired civil servants in an attempt to determine if dead people are on the government’s pensions payroll.
The pensions department says the fresh registration of retirees or their departments, including taking their fingerprints and verifying records, is part of data and payroll cleansing.

This comes after the Auditor-General raised the alarm that taxpayers could be paying dead people pension because there were many persons above 70 years receiving pension without proof that they are alive through providing life certificates every six months.

But the pension department reckons that the proof of life certificates was a colonial relic that was discontinued nearly 50 years ago and it has been using bank returns and widows seeking benefits to remove dead people from its payroll.

READ: Rising civil service retirements burst pensions budget

Now, the pensions unit wants to step up the verification to include the physical count of the retirees or their dependents using gadgets such as computers, fingerprint scanners and digital cameras to capture the bio-data of applicants. 

“The department is planning to conduct a biometric registration of pensioners and dependents in the near future as part of data and payroll cleansing,” said Shem Nyakutu, acting pension secretary at the Treasury.

Kenya has struggled to maintain a clean pension and payroll book, leading to losses of billions of taxpayers’ cash.

A recent inquiry found 12,000 false names on the State payroll, and established that more than Sh100 million a month was lost in payments to “ghost workers”.

Pocketed by insiders

The government suspected that former workers continue to receive salaries after leaving the Civil Service or the pay was being pocketed by insiders.
The pensions department want to establish if there “ghost pensioners” and noted that the Auditor General has not detected loss of money through dubious payments.

Auditor-General Edward Ouko said “4,477 dependents in the system were aged over 70. According to the pension policy, such dependents are required to provide life certificates every six months”.

“However, the certificates were not provided as required and there is risk of payments being made to deceased dependents.”

Taxpayers in the year to June paid Sh50.8 billion to retired civil servants, up from Sh15 billion in 2002, underlining growing taxpayers’ burden of keeping former public servants comfortable.

Estimates from the Treasury show the annual pension bill will rise to Sh66.0 billion in the year ended June 2018, making it one the largest budget items. The Public Service Commission said nearly a third of civil servants are aged above 50. 

This will derail government efforts to shift public spending to farming and building of roads, ports, railways and power plants among other productive sectors to jump-start the slowing economy. 

At Sh50.8 billion, the pension bill for the year to June is more than the Sh42 billion that Kenya spends on health.

Public workers have since independence enjoyed retirement benefits that are fully paid for by the taxpayers through the Consolidated Fund.

[email protected]